Grant Park Music Festival

Grant Park Music Festival – 2024 Festival Season 
Highlights Presentation – February 22, 2024

Posted on by admin

Even in winter, with the glass doors closed the Pritzker Pavilion stage at Millennium Park is warm and cozy. As is my wont, I hung out near the back, near the food, in a spot probably inhabited by a percussionist during a summer concert.

As to the hors d’oeuvres, who decided long ago that kabobs were the way to go at such events? They’re really not finger food. Eating off a stick just doesn’t measure up to eating off the bone. They don’t slide easily off the holder, perhaps because they’re usually too dry unless you dip them in some messier than tasty sauce, and you risk impaling the inside of your mouth with the sharp end. But the wine and cheese were good.

The program was better. Christopher Bell, Director of the Grant Park Chorus, walked around in a natty hat, looking a lot like a Truman Capote impressionist, and gave us a rare insight to a normally well-guarded secret, of which we were not sworn to secrecy, so here it is.

During last year’s Chicago Nascar event, Bell became aware of, and fascinated by the fact that, a driver of the same name was competing in the race. One thing led to another, and Nascar will be sponsoring this year’s 4th of July concert and Chicago’s Bell will be wearing (this part’s the usual non-reveal) a special Nascar racing suit with the number 1 on it (also with, I assume, some red, white and blue).

Two musicians from the orchestra performed beautifully (sorry, I didn’t get their names), separately, one playing the double bass and one the marimba.

Carlos Kalmar spoke about his upcoming final season as the orchestra’s conductor, aided by some recorded selections from this year’s lineup, and one that was inserted accidentally, not that any of us would have noticed had he not pointed out the faux pas. He was very pleased to tell us that his final concert will include a Vienna children’s choir directed by his daughter.

After the bassist played a second short piece to close the program, and the audience rose to clap, I made my quick exit (first one to the coat rack!), walking past Kalmar, who was standing in the wings. I expressed my surprise that my departure had been greeted with such applause, which brought a smile to his face, so I guess we’re buddies now.

Grant Park Music Festival – Millennium Park – August 16, 2023

Posted on by admin

Despite further evidence of a new normal, extreme climate this summer that caused unprecedented concert cancellations and occasionally unfortunate, inhospitable conditions at the outdoor venue, I managed to make it to a fair number of events, all good, but none as good as this one, in part because of the first Grant Park Orchestra performance of a work by a composer previously unknown to me.

I went in assuming I was biding my time waiting for Sir Stephen Hough to entertain the audience with Mendelssohn’s concerto No. 1 in G Minor, as he did with great skill, when I was treated to six wonderful movements from Foreign Lands by the little-known Moritz Moszkowski, and to a picture of his magnificent mustache in the program.

By the time the evening rolled around to the last composition, after an encore by Hough, I thought my musical appetite might already be satiated, but I was able to find room for a delicious dessert of Les Preludes by Liszt.

Grant Park Music Festival – Millennium Park and Lake Shore Park (String Fellows) – August 2 & 3, 2023

Posted on by admin

The music was good, yada, yada, yada, so let’s get to the other things going through my head.

Millennium Park doesn’t allow dogs, except for service animals (which don’t include emotional support animals), so barking during the concerts there Is one of the few interruptive sounds you don’t hear. Keep in mind that I’ve heard all manner of disruptive noise during the music, but haven’t yet, though it’s probably only a matter of time, heard any of the people in the audience bark (as they have been doing in the Dawg Pound bleachers at Cleveland Browns games since 1985).

Even if they were permitted to come, the dogs might not be interested. Studies show that classical music reduces stress in dogs, but that, after a time, they become bored (as do many humans), and that in the long term they respond better to reggae and soft rock. It’s not clear what the time limit is on a dog’s attention span, but all but one of the numerous dogs at the one-hour Lake Shore Park concert held it together throughout and that one’s owner was kind enough to take it for a stroll as soon as the problem arose.

Now if we could only get concert ushers to take unruly human attendees for a walk.

Grant Park Music Festival – Millennium Park – July 19, 2023

Posted on by admin

Two things drew me to the park for this concert, the beautiful weather (as opposed to the previous two Wednesday evenings, which featured flooding one night and a tornado warning the other, both of which shut down the concerts), and the Gorchakov, as opposed to the more commonly played Ravel, orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, which I had never heard before (not that I can tell the difference).

But neither was the main attraction (well, maybe the weather, as evidenced by the largest crowd of the year).

The first piece, the one-year-old Profiles, an homage to Harlem, was introduced by its composer, Carlos Simon, who told the audience that the sound of nearby sirens during rehearsal, given the subject matter, seemed entirely appropriate for the music, and that we should accept it as such if it happened during the performance. I couldn’t help but wonder whether the musicians had a different viewpoint.

After Profiles, the orchestra gave us Alexander Glazunov’s Concerto in A Minor, featuring solo violinist Esther Yoo. What followed that was the highlight of the night, as Yoo played a solo encore of . . . wait for it . . . Yankee Doodle Dandy that displayed her exceptional talent and artistic whimsey.

For a joyful five minutes, listen to the version I found online of her playing it at the 2022 Copenhagen Summer Festival.

Chicago Duo Piano Festival – Nichols Hall – July 16, 2023

Posted on by admin

Eleven days ago I saw Michelle Cann rock Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue on the piano at a rehearsal with the Grant Park Orchestra (no Oscar Levant impersonations involved). In addition to her virtuosic playing, she flashed a radiant smile and an animated involvement with the music. I even was mesmerized by the way her feet danced with the pedals,

Unfortunately, I missed Joyce Yang performing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 a week later, as did she, when a tornado warning shut down the Millennium Park concert. If I had been there I’m sure the closing of the large glass doors to protect the musicians from the elements would have reminded me of The Time Machine, when the doors at the sphinx’s base closed, trapping Weena and other Eloi inside.

But Joyce escaped (as did Weena with the unnamed inventor’s help) and I was there to hear her work her magic on Franz Lisa’s Totentanz three days later in the park.

My stroll through the world of piano got topped off the next day by watching the Millennium Park soloists of the future play in the Music Institute Of Chicago’s student recital portion of its annual Chicago Duo Piano Festival, highlighted by the play of the already-acclaimed, brother-sister, young-teen-team of Eric and Katie Koh.

As great as they were, however, my fancy was struck by three of the young artists playing Rachmaninoff’s 2 pieces for 6 hands waltz; three others playing Kevin Olson’s Outstanding, which features one of them walking back and forth behind the other two to play different parts of the piano; and the four-person, two-piano rendition of Take Five.

According to UPI, the Guinness World Record was set in 2018 when 40 pianos were played on a stage in China in unison with 599 pianos in a nearby square, for a total 639 played at the same time. I can’t believe I missed that one.

Grant Park Music Festival – Millennium Park – August 5, 2022

Posted on by admin

The guest soloist, Andreas Haefliger, deftly played Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. In case you were wondering, as I was, there are pieces for the right hand only, and, this one was really on my mind during the concert, a series of books with music that can be played with either hand alone.

I also wondered what Haefliger would be doing with his right hand during the performance. If he didn’t know the piece by heart he could have used it to turn the pages. If he had a page turner, would that person have to use only their left hand?

But he just let the right hand sit idle. Seemed like a waste. He could have used it to text. Isn’t that what everyone does when they have a free hand, especially while driving?

I wonder if next year the festival will include a clarinet concerto for the lower lip.

Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique closed the evening. Everything I could hear was good but there were some parts that were so soft that I only knew the orchestra was playing by watching the conductor wave his baton. He could have been faking it, but not during the fourth movement’s hallucinatory March to the Scaffold, which told a story supported by the percussion section that was both symbolic and cymballic.

Lights on Broadway – Millennium Park – July 7, 2022

Posted on by admin

Rehearsal. Almost any seat I want. Close enough so that I could see that the guest conductor, Kimberly Grigsby, wasn’t wearing shoes, but not close enough that I could tell whether her feet smelled.

It made me wonder what she would have on for the actual performance. Heels would change the angle of appearance of her baton from the musicians’ vantage point. Would they be confused? They were when she accidentally dropped her baton. She and the rest of us were amused.

Vocals were performed by Capathia Jenkins and Sam Simahk. Wait. I just saw him last weekend, playing Freddy in My Fair Lady. I hope he told someone he’s going to skip a couple shows.

Phew. They must know. Sitting a couple rows in front of me at the rehearsal were Colonel Pickering and the housekeeper Mrs. Pearce. But no sign of Professor Higgins or Eliza Dooliitle. Perhaps they’re at the races.

As listed in the program, the second half of the concert, except for one song, didn’t particularly interest me, so I left early, the operative rhyming couplet being “If I’d paid, I’d have stayed.”

Epilogue

The Grant Park Music Festival now informs me that Jonathan Groff (aka George III on Broadway) will be appearing to sing that one song, You’ll Be Back, my favorite song from Hamilton and one of only two from that show that I actually remember.

So, he was right, I’ll be back.

Cirque Goes to Hollywood – Millennium Park – July 6, 2022

Posted on by admin

Hoorah for Hollywood, whose music the Grant Park Orchestra played as the backdrop for Troupe Vertigo, a dizzying group that creates an atmosphere, its website says, “where reality bends, expectations twist and the body embraces the imagination.”

I’ve given up on reality, as I hear it’s not so great, and try not to have any expectations, so as to avoid being disappointed, but I assure you that the manner in which the cirque performers’ bodies were bent and twisted into dangerous and sometimes painful looking positions, while hanging above the stage dangling from ropes or doing handstands on gymnastic equipment, transcended anything I routinely imagine.

The feats executed during the theme from Mission Impossible fit that bill. but, when three performers came out wearing horse heads while performing to the theme from The Magnificent Seven, I thought they should have done so for the prior number, the theme from The Godfather. I wonder if they were asked to do so but found the courage to refuse.

A little over three years ago I wrote about the Chicago Philharmonic playing classical music to accompany the Cirque de la Symphonie. How many more combinations like this do I need to see to complete a full cirque[it]?

Grant Park Music Festival – Millennium Park – June 24, 2022

Posted on by admin

With regular conductor Carlos Kalmar still incapacitated due to Covid, his former assistant, David Danzmayr, now music director of the Oregon Symphony, filled in, after Stephen Alltop of the Northwestern University Department of Music had done so on extremely short notice two days earlier.

And, again, the program was modified, seemingly flawlessly, to accommodate the change, with Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 replacing Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11. With two days to prepare (an eternity compared to what Alltop had), I can only assume that the reason was that Danzmayr can’t pronounce Shostakovich.

The program still was led off by Simone Lamsma playing Korngold’s Violin Concerto on the 1718 “Mylyarnski” Stradavarius (famous for having been converted to a “left handed” instrument and then later restored to its original state), on loan to her by an anonymous benefactor. Modestly prevents me from elucidating on the gift, but there is a proposed Lego violin that looks very similar and needs 1000 supporters by September 13th to become a reality. Surely this is a bipartisan candidate we can all get behind.

Grant Park Music Festival – Millennium Park – June 22, 2022

Posted on by admin

As per the email I received, new security procedures were implemented “in order to maintain the friendly, relaxed atmosphere inside the Park.” And I can attest that the armed guards wearing bulletproof vests were friendly enough to me, though I was careful not to make any sudden movements, not that I’ve been capable of quickness for some time.

The Michigan Avenue entrances, which I never use anyway, have been closed for the concerts. I didn’t check to see if they have been walled off by electric barbed wire fences, ala Jurassic Park.

Attendees are still asked to open their bags, but, so far, do not have to bring enough goodies for everyone.

The concert itself was terrific, though somewhat unexpected. The first announcement was that the conductor had tested positive for Covid after the afternoon rehearsal. There was no query of the audience as to anyone with experience who could take his place, as they did in Airplane after the pilot and co-pilot ate the fish.

Instead, an unnamed person, whom the musicians seem to recognize, walked out, told us the changes in the program, to which no one objected, and hit the road running.

We still got to hear Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony (for him it wasn’t Covid, but syphilis that laid him up).

The piano team of ZOFO (perhaps suffering from FOMO) still played, but a changed selection, without orchestral backup.

One modern piece by someone I never heard of was replaced by Beethoven’s Egmont Overture and Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet. Jackpot!

I’ll be back for more, if only for the tingle I get when wanded at the entrance.